Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Why is it that I spend so much of my time doing nothing of worth, and so little actually accomplishing something, especially something for his Kingdom? Maybe this is what's missing:

Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, walked into the temple area, and thoroughly looked all around contemplating what He already knew. He observed all the facts before Him.

As Jesus looked about Him, He measured everything by divine standards. He saw everything through the eyes of God. He never looked at anything through the eyes of the world system’s convenience or selfishness.

Sometimes I'm miserly with my spending; sometimes I'm lusting over a nice large LCD TV. Sometimes I feel like I'm drifting through life; other times I'm all about goal-setting and vision casting. The problem is that both sides of it are wrong if I'm not measuring things by the divine standard.

See, Jesus lays it out time and time again; we've got it all backwards down here. It's like we're playing a sport and trying to get as high of a score as possible. And He keeps trying to let us know we're playing golf. It reminds me of one of my favorite Matthew West songs (My Finest Hour):

The king of contradictions strikes againYou said the last to cross the finish line will winAnd the beggars will be millionaires somedayAnd the humble ones are gonna have their say

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

New Scientist is reporting that a "monogamy gene" has been found. From the article:

... men with two copies of RS3 334 were more likely to be unmarried than men with one or none, and if they were married, they were twice as likely to have a marital crisis.

What effect does this have on our reading of Scripture and its call to either completely monogamy or utter abstinence? How do we reconcile these findings with statements like the following:

"Haven't you read," [Jesus] replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." -- Matthew 19:4-6

Well, assuming it is confirmed by further studies, what does it mean? Does this entitle a part of the male population to skip out on that restriction, because that's how God genetically "made" them?

Umm... no. It's pretty clear from Scripture that all of us were born with a tendency to disobey God (see Romans 5), and despite that we are commanded to obey. Granted we cannot completely obey without daily submitting to Christ. But that's what we must do, whether our tendency to sin has been identified with a genetic marker or not. We must die to self, including the genes that make us "us".

Lord, help me to deny myself--even die to myself--and live for you alone!